Jerome David Salinger is a writer who has created one of the key works of American literature of the 20th century, The Catcher in the Rye. The path to this work, as well as life after its publication, were not easy and joyful.
Childhood and students
Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 in New York, USA. His father owned a meat and cheese business and hoped his son would follow in his footsteps. But even in his school years, Jerome began to get involved in literature and wrote his first stories, and also wrote several lines for the anthem of his school.
Salinger tried to find himself in many universities, receiving education in the USA, Austria, Poland, from where he was expelled for his "sharp language" and very complex character. But in 1939, fate brought him to Colombia, where he began to listen to a lecture course on a short story from Whit Burnett, an American writer and owner of Story magazine. It is this teacher that can be called a key figure in the career of a young writer, because he noted the character of one of Salinger’s short stories, Holden Caulfield, as an image worthy of a separate novel. This was the impetus for writing the first and only full-fledged novel, "The Catcher in the Rye, " which became a world bestseller.
In 1942, Jerome David Salinger fell in love with the daughter of the famous playwright - Unu O'Neill. They began an affair, but war broke out, and Salinger went to the front as a volunteer. During the war, his girlfriend met Charlie Chaplin, whom she married. Jerome David Salinger still married in 1955, and he had a daughter and a son. But the wife could not stand life behind a high fence from the whole world, and the couple broke up.
During the war, Salinger continued to write. Even in the most inappropriate, it would seem, military situations, he composed his novel about Holden Caulfield, growing up a difficult teenager. Work as a writer to him live and move on.
